Don't count out mainline Protestants yet

No one is asking that question with greater urgency these days than mainline Protestants, Christians who belong to one of the historic denominations that once dominated America's religious landscape.

Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists – these and many other traditional denominations are shrinking at an alarming rate. Once making up the majority of Protestants, mainline churches now are just 15 percent of Protestant congregations. Every year they lose more members.

And yet, as several churches in Orange County show, the obituary for mainline Protestantism may be premature. There are signs of life in once-moribund congregations. And many of those congregations are turning on its head conventional wisdom about what makes churches live and die.

Late last month the mayor and police chief of Buena Park stood before a small audience at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church a few blocks from Knott's Berry Farm.

They'd been invited by the church's self-described “pushing the curve” pastor, Richard Braun, who left a career as a technology entrepreneur to go into ministry.

Braun asked the mayor and police chief to tell church members how Good Shepherd could help the city meet some of its most pressing needs.

It was a tiny gesture. Yet the officials were impressed. Braun said the police chief told church members “it's so rare that he gets invited to a church … He really spoke about that a lot.”

After the presentation, church members spent more than two hours brainstorming ways to help the city. How about an after-school program for at-risk youths, members asked? A computer lab? Tutoring? Using the church for blood drives or as a polling place on Election Day?

None of the ideas was revolutionary. But for Good Shepherd, which fills barely one-tenth of its sanctuary's 425 seats on Sundays, the meeting itself was a radical step.

Until recently, Braun said, many members held out hope that with a little polish on what they've always done, the church could return to its decades-ago glory days, when nearly 1,000 people packed pews.

Now, Braun said, “I sense a real openness” to new ideas.

For years the assumption about mainline churches like Good Shepherd is that they declined because they were too churchy, too liberal or too constrained by denominational rigidity.

“Why Conservative Churches Are Growing,” an influential 1972 book by church scholar Dean Kelley, claimed that churches with stricter interpretations of scripture grew because they satisfied a hunger for clear-cut, committed faith.

More liberal mainline churches, by contrast, muddied their message with controversial political issues such as women's ordination and same-sex marriage.

Recently, however, this conventional wisdom is giving way to a more complex understanding of the forces buffeting American Christianity.

Conservative churches are shrinking now, too, as America becomes more secular and ethnically diverse. For five straight years the number of Southern Baptists, one of America's largest and most theologically conservative denominations, has declined. Meanwhile, attendance at evangelical megachurches, after skyrocketing in the 1980s and 1990s, has plateaued.

A new book is making the rounds in church circles: “The Great Evangelical Recession” by John Dickerson, a onetime investigative journalist turned evangelical pastor in Arizona.

Dickerson marshals an array of statistics to claim that the conservative churches heralded by Kelley are on the verge of their own steep decline.

In fact, said Good Shepherd's Braun, members of his church are mostly traditional in their beliefs, disapproving of their denomination's policy permitting ordination of gay people and the blessing of same-sex marriages.

Good Shepherd's struggles can be traced more to the church's failure to respond to changes in its community, Braun said.

Once home to dairy farmers and white suburban pioneers, Buena Park is now a majority-minority city where more than a third of residents are foreign-born and nearly 40 percent of businesses are owned by Asians.

“Some of the few younger families we've had, they do soccer on Sundays, baseball, you name it,” Braun said. Even longtime members peel away on Sundays to take grandkids to sporting events.

Faced with such cultural headwinds, leaders of successful mainline congregations said the key to survival lies in transforming churches into indispensable community resources.

At Episcopal Church of the Messiah in downtown Santa Ana, what was once a mostly white congregation now draws up to 80 worshippers each Sunday to a noon Spanish-language service. Two hundred English speakers attend services at 8 and 10:15 a.m.

Last month the church hired its first Hispanic rector, Abel Lopez, a Cuban-born priest who previously headed outreach ministries at All Saints Church in Pasadena. All Saints, the largest Episcopal church west of the Mississippi, is known for liberal social activism.

Lopez said outreach to Santa Ana's Hispanic community is key to Messiah's success. Church initiatives include tutoring, child care, feeding the homeless and celebrating Hispanic church festivals such as the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

“That's why people are energized here,” Lopez said. “They come from jobs or wherever, and they can dream of how we as a people of faith can create a better world.”

At Harbor Christian Church in Newport Beach, a member of the Disciples of Christ denomination, members solved the Sunday morning problem by shifting activities to Sunday evening or other days of the week.

Pastor Wes Knight said attendance at adult spiritual formation classes shot up when they were shifted to Sunday night.

Now, 30 people come weekly for a potluck supper and member-taught classes on topics ranging from forgiveness to the spirituality of pottery.

Knight said Harbor Christian, surrounded by several of Orange County's largest churches, embraces its identity “as an alternative to the megachurch.”

There are no theological requirements for membership, and the roughly 70 worshippers who attend each Sunday are intimately involved in one another's lives.

“They're just like my own family to me,” said Mike Nelson of Mission Viejo who recalled being enthusiastically welcomed at the church when he arrived five years ago, even though he was struggling with a methamphetamine addiction.

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